What is Character.AI?
Character.AI is a web and mobile platform launched in 2022 that lets users chat with AI-driven characters — millions of community-created personas plus official ones. It hit roughly 20M monthly active users and 153M monthly visits as of early 2026, making it the largest platform in the AI character chat category by traffic. The service is freemium, with a c.ai+ subscription at $9.99/month. In October 2025 it banned users under 18 from chatbot conversations, displacing a significant portion of its audience.
How Reverie fits in
Reverie is a Telegram-native AI character chat platform — same category as the platform described above, but with a curated cast (8+ characters), persistent memory across days and weeks, and zero signup friction. Read the full Reverie overview →.